Toy Organizing Tips {our toy storage makeover}

Do you ever feel like you are being invaded by toys? Today I am sharing our multipurpose closet and Toy Organizing Tips. Our finished basement is full of rooms that serve as living space so our closet/storage space is VERY limited. What I wouldn’t give for a walk up attic or basement for storage! We have to work with what we have for storage when it comes to toys and kids stuff. We do have a small room in our finished basement that acts as a playroom but it’s also my mom’s den so everything toy related is out of site.

We have lots of decorative toy boxes and one closet that is about 10×10 in the finished basement. I decided to fill that space with heavy duty wire racks and wow, what a difference they have made! Here is the before of one of the racks that got completely out of control. -ha

This closet is my blog/prop closet and also the storage space for kids games, lego building sets and baskets full of miscellaneous toys. This closet is currently in an overhaul so we emptied everything from this rack, purged, donated and gathered all the like items from around the house (games ect.) and put them back so everything is all in one place.

We also have a wall area in our family room (which I never share) that is also a kid zone mess. Many of these items got put on the rack (games/legos) and then we put everything else in a toy box that is actually below (you can’t see it).

So both of these areas are getting reorganized. I decided to keep all the games, xbox stuff, building sets and pretend play sets on the wire rack in the closet. We took all of the lego toys that were already built, GI-Joe guys and more pretend play war hero sets and created a toy box full of that stuff in our family room.

Toy Organizing Tips

1. Empty out whatever area you are organizing. We emptied the wire rack and started fresh.

2. When you are emptying your space, get two bags. A donate bag and a trash bag. GET RID OF STUFF that hasn’t been played with or used in more than a year. Seriously. It’s an awesome feeling to purge!

I personally do toy organizing and purging when my son isn’t home. He thinks he has to keep everything and honestly, if he hasn’t played with it or asked for it in a year, chances are he never will. He is pretty good about donating to our little cousin who is 4 years old so I do let him pick what things he wants to give to him.

3. Grab lots of storage bins, boxes or baskets to corral small items. Shop your house. You will be amazed at what you can find to store items in.

Some of these toy organizing tips may not apply to your needs but you get the idea, create zones of items to keep things organized.

4. Put all the items back and keep like items together. You will see that we kept all the games together, pokemon cards, xbox, baseball cards and pretend play items together. You can even go so far as to label the bins if you want.

You may be wondering, what did she do with all the other stuff that was seen in the messy picture?

I donated and tossed a bunch of stuff. For those of you who have kids, you know that they keep every little thing and as years go by, they get gross and donating isn’t an option.

I also bought 5 other racks for this room so one of those racks is dedicated to miscellaneous stuff. The key to organization is proper and adequate storage. I personally love these heavy duty racks because you can stack them beside each other or create “rows” with a small walkway between them. The other awesome thing about these racks is that they are on wheels. So easy to move around! I got these at Home Depot and they range from $50 to $90 each. The wreaths that you saw in the picture are now hung in our Christmas shed on the wall. Stay tuned, I will be sharing the rest of this little closet over the next couple weeks. Be sure to check out our DIY Projects Page and Organizational Page for more ideas.

Comments

ha yep. My dad added on a tiny closet (about 8x8) off our garage and lined it with shelves for my mom + me and all our Christmas CRAP (as he calls it! haha). I think he got tire of tripping over it all in the small storage space we have in our basement. ha